Posts in: British Military

The Imperial War Museum presents London's greatest collection of military arms and hardware. Famed for its tanks, aircraft, and weapons, the museum also reveals and reflects on the rich personal tales and first-hand accounts of British and Commonwealth involvement in 20th and 21st Century conflicts all around the world. Visit the Imperial War Museum with a Blue Badge Tourist Guide to discover their stories and touch the hand of military history.

Elite soldiers from 5 infantry and 2 cavalry regiments have been guarding the Monarch since 1660. These 7 regiments are called the Household Division. The Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace and St James Palace is a time honoured symbol of the British monarchy and a great example of British pomp and ceremony.

Who can forget the wonderful site of the 888,246 handmade ceramic poppies by the artist Paul Cummins filling the moat of the Tower of London and cascading down the walls and over the drawbridge area three years ago? Created to represent every British fatality during WWI and to remember the 100 years since the outbreak of war ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’, grew daily, aided in a small way by many Blue Badge Tourist Guides who helped to plant some of them.

Next to the Black Cultural Archives, the ceremonial unveiling of the African & Caribbean War Memorial took place in Windrush Square Brixton on 22 June – Windrush Day. The date and location of the memorial fixed one key historical event in peoples’ minds, the arrival of SS Empire Windrush in 1948 carrying 498 men and a few women from the Caribbean.

The newly opened National Army Museum in Chelsea area of London tells the story of the British army over the past 400 years. It is felt that many people know little about what the army does, let alone the soldier’s real experience now or in the past. The museum seeks to bridge the gap between the army and British society.

The Cabinet War Rooms are the actual wartime headquarters of Winston Churchill, combined with a large museum devoted to his life. Housed in the basement of the magnificent Treasury building, the War Rooms are the actual conference and communication rooms used by Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff during World War II. In 2005, an extensive museum was added documenting the long and eventful life of Sir Winston Churchill.

World War One Walks have now found a natural home on the homepage of School Travel Organiser. “Plenty of teachers found Blue Badge tours a natural fit for their geography and sports history courses in the run-up to 2012. We’re hoping we can repeat something like that with the Great War,” says Stan Medland, a World War One Walks committee member.

There’s a Turkish saying that one disaster is better than 1,000 pieces of advice. Whatever myths created about it in the last 100 years, Gallipoli was a disaster. The Turks won. Gallipoli was the British Empire and France trying to knock Germany’s ally Turkey out of World War One, thereby reducing the pressure on the Allies’ eastern front. As the historians say, “Gallipoli was launched almost casually, into a void, and was doomed to fail.”

In commemorating of the centenary of the First World War, much of our attention has been focused on the soldiers that fought and died in foreign lands in what was described as a war to end all wars. Simon Rodway’s walking tour from Holborn to Liverpool Street on 11 November 2014 made us look at the events closer to home – the deadly menace that was the Zeppelin air ships that flew almost silently over the London sky in 1915 wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting Londoners below by launching the first of many incendiary bombs here in London and other parts of England. It was to be known as the Year of the Zeppelin. The catastrophe that befell London lasted 20 minutes but our walk would take a little longer.

The Blue Badge Tourist Guides' World War One Walks committee is organising more than a dozen events around the middle of November, which will recall the 1914-18 Home Front in London, Windsor, Manchester and Birmingham.

A group of London Blue Badge Tourist Guides have created a website World War One Walks and a marketing programme to attract people who are interested in learning more about the Great War through walking tours. They have committed to building this initiative across the whole country and for the full five years of centenary commemorations.

London Blue Badge Tourist Guides are involved in a truly unique art installation to commemorate the start of the First World War. More than 800,000 ceramic poppies – each representing a British and Colonial military death during the First World War - are being planted in the Tower of London’s dry moat. When completed on Armistice Day on 11 November 2014, the art installation, titled ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’, will include 888,246 poppies.